I have just bought a new laptop with a nVidia 960m inside and it is a new hybrid model that also has an Intel graphics processor working side by side.
I do not know if that is the case for you but I asked a similar question here.
Installing nVidia driver on hybrid card
and the answer I got was to enter the Terminal and enter
sudo add-apt-repository ...

The easiest way to install drivers for this new card is to run
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-352 nvidia-prime
sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
You will get an option to switch adapters (PRIME) in Nvidia X Server Settings.

I found this solution.
Switch to tty1 by hitting Ctrl+Alt+F1
Login
Force the display to turn off, by calling setterm -blank force
Switch back to X by hitting Ctrl+Alt+F7
I will try to write an upstart script to automate this.

If you're really using an Nvidia GeForce 210 the hangup could very well just be the old hardware. Circuits age, boards start to mess up and eventually die. You're issue likely has almost nothing to do with Ubuntu and everything to do with your hardware.
I would say step up to something in the GTX series, even if it's one of the older GTX cards it should ...

I had the same problem installing the driver for an old GeForce 9800 GT in Ubuntu 14.04-2. It was the NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.76.run
I switched to the the tty1 using Ctrl+Alt+F1 and also stopped the service lightdm and when running the executable got the same error .
What I did to solve the problem was navigate to the /tmp folder and erase the .X0-lock ...

You should be able to install AMD Catalyst Control Centre on Ubuntu as well.
If you need to download it and update it manually you can use the sudo dpkg --install package_file command in the terminal. "package_file" here being the name of the file you are trying to install.

Ubuntu should work OK with this laptop. You can test it first by booting from LiveCD.
You can install Catalyst Control Center and switch adapters in Ubuntu.
It is done by running in terminal
sudo apt-get install fglrx-updates
Or it can be done in GUI
System Settings -> Software & Updates -> Additional Drivers
But you will have to switch adapters ...

That's an nVidia card. The open source driver nouveau should have been installed already, but many users opt for the proprietary driver instead. More info here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia

I finally found a bug report here: that describes the problem and a fix.
Open a terminal and type:
gksudo gedit /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-xserver-command.conf
Then add the -bs option to your lightdm config
[SeatDefaults]
# Dump core
xserver-command=X -bs -core
However, as I found out on the Nvidia forms from Axfelix's post this does not ...

You can make ubuntu download the missing key it is complaining about.
In your case: ... the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 8D8847D52F4AAA66 copy the hash from error message 8D8847D52F4AAA66
$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 8D8847D52F4AAA66
$ sudo apt-get update
It should not complain anymore.

you should install proprietary drivers from Radeon, thermal settings are highly customisable in Catalyst.
also what other GPU you have? if it`s NVidia then you can manually assign it to anything your XServer use via NVidia XServer settings.
also check this question, it should contain some info which can help you:

Theoretically, it should work. As for any problem with graphics, there should be a check-box in Photoshop settings that allows you to enable/disable GPU acceleration. With GPU acceleration disabled, Photoshop should work without any problems.

I've got a GT630 with dual monitors which works very good. The one thing with nvidia and Ubuntu is the sluggish UI which you'll have to fix by setting the grub boot parameter:
video=LVDS-1:d
I don't know why Ubuntu don't fix this boot parameter by default, but it is what it is. Simple fix to an annoying problem.

After many tries and errors I reached a conclusion. Nowadays desktop distoros based on Linux are not compatible enough with all the possible combinations of hardware. I strongly believe that one day a Linux distro with the compatibility of Windows, ease of Mac, speed and power of open source kernel will be made. But today is not the day, so the only ...

If the screen is "flashing", you can attempt pressing F11 which enables full-screen mode which solved the flashing for me, or try resizing the window almost the amount of full screen. If this doesn't fix it, the problem might be in your graphics card or drivers.

When 14.04 came out, I ran into (among a host of other issues) screen tearing with my nvidia card; Try going into the control panel and setting the underscanning to 10% or so - in my case, changing the scanning at all caused a screen flicker followed by a perfect picture. Hopefully that fixes it, but I had to do it at every reboot because for some reason, ...

You sudo have hybrid Intel+Nvidia graphics.
Your card is new and the recommended driver does not support it.
To install a working driver with adapter switcher run
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-352 nvidia-prime
sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
and reboot.
You will be able to ...

Solved
Using 14.04. Working perfectly now.
edit
My bad. Details of the solution:
When booting with AMD proprietary drivers on a new Radeon card, the system hangs at a screen saying "Starting Version 219"
There are quite a few posts about this issue, and a lot of conflicting answers, everything from "It is not an issue, it is only cosmetical" to "It ...

I had the similar problem two months ago with ubuntu 14.04 after an update. My PC is running a nvidia geforce 7300 gs. Not exactly the same card as yours, but maybe the solution I applied will work for you as well.
I uninstalled nvidia-304 driver and installed the nvidia-173. This is not a perfect solution, because I still encountered some minor issues, ...

Yes if the server generates or, for instance, re-sizes images. Software that uses, or could use, the existing graphic card for such tasks, is not unheard of.
Surely, this depends a lot on what kind of software, what kind of GPU, is the suitable driver available and things the like.

You can remove the Nvidia proprietary driver by running in terminal
sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
I also suggest removing xorg-edgers ppa too. It can be done by
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
But I suggest installing proprietary Nvidia driver with nvidia-prime.
If you choose the right driver and install it correctly, ...

Graphics cards help with:
CUDA/OpenCL style workloads (eg bitcoin mining)
3D rendering. You might be rendering stuff on demand.
Most cards can help with video decoding but this applies to many IGPs too.
Some cards have hardware to help with video encoding. The quality is usually a lot poorer and this is still under development. ffmpeg can use nvenc ...

You do not need to install any drivers for this graphics adapter.
The driver is already installed in Ubuntu by default.
You can see that you have i915 kernel module and xserver-xorg-video-intel user space driver.

Well, I had the same problem some time ago. The only way I could fix this is turning off CPU integrated video in BIOS. I have Intel Core i5.
As I remember, there is a problem in working in gybrid mode, when it tries to use integrated processor under low load.
So enter BIOS and try to turn integrated graphics off.

I had a similar problem years ago. Solving it essentially required aggressively removing all nvidia program files. Please note that the use of "--purge" when uninstalling the nvidia package did not seem to remove the offending nvidia program(s). I had to do a subsequent file search using "nvidia" to locate residual nvidia packages(?).
Please see my post: ...

Tested all ports with my MacBook Pro.
Results:
DVI conneection - 1600 x...;
HDMI connection - 1980 x ....;
DisplayPort connection - 2560 x...;
The only port that can give you full resolution is the DisplayPort. Use DisplayPort is association with your MacBook Pro to get full resolution

i solved similar issue by installing proprietary drivers for NVidia in
dash menu -> additional drivers.
there are plenty of them there, just try and see which works best for your GPU.
and if you have trouble locating or installing available nvidia drivers this article will help you.

not present in vnc, its corrected after installing the nvida drivers according to this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2265505 Which I have had to do on past installs with GTX750 but it has always given me the additional drivers alert so I figured it was no longer required.
thanks everyone

SIGSEGV (SEGmentation Violation SIGnal) indicates a Segmentation fault, i.e. a program trying to access memory or other resources it mustn't.
This can be caused by bad memory, but as you said, memtest didn't find anything. The most likely cause for segfaults is a bug in a program (in this case Java) or a driver (e.g. the free Xorg nVidia driver, like you ...

There were a lot of questions on askubuntu about constantly returning to the login screen.
I've upgraded machines with AMD and nVidia cards from 14.04 to 15.04 (through 14.10) and on both I had this issue. (proprietary drivers)
Both resolved.
For nVidia
When in login screen, launched the terminal: Ctrl+Alt+F1
found the drivers:
dpkg -l | grep nvidia
...